Animation Podcast 032 - The “Unofficial” Tangled Animators’ Audio Commentary

The Animation Podcast, October 31st, 2012.

Hey everybody, this is Clay, and welcome to episode number 32 of The Animation Podcast.

Now, you're probably wondering, why has it taken three years since the last podcast?

And

the truth is, I've just been busy.

I've been animating on Tangled, Tangled Ever After, Paper Man, and Wreck-It Ralph.

And in between all those shows, I've traveled a lot.

I've done a lot of talks at schools and conferences, and I can pretty much guarantee that everywhere

I go, I will hear the question, when is the next podcast?

So if you're one of those people that have ever asked me, ever stopped me, and said,

when's the next podcast?

The answer is definitely now.

It is today.

It's happening.

It's here.

I hope you're happy.

And honestly, you should just pat yourself on the back.

If it wasn't for you, if it wasn't for all of you guys kind of bugging me about it, it

wouldn't have happened.

I think I would have just put it away, retired it.

But hearing from all of you all the time about how you listen to it at school, or in your

studio, or you guys play it out loud while you're animating, it's really an honor for

me to be a part of your process and to provide something that gives you some inspiration.

So really, thanks to you, you're the reason why I'm making this.

It's really because you guys keep asking for it.

So unfortunately, I think I'm cursing myself to being asked forever, but that may just

be what it's going to be.

So what this podcast is, it's actually a very different format from all the others I've

done.

And when I was out meeting a lot of people, I would hear a lot, how come there's no audio

commentary on the Tangle DVD?

And although I don't have a good answer for that, I do have a good solution.

And that was, I think, the Tangle DVD podcast.

And that was, to get all the animators I could together in a room, we would play Tangled

with the sound off and just record the conversation.

So that's what this podcast is all about.

And you will get the most benefit out of this podcast if you watch the movie along with

us.

So at a certain point, after everyone introduces themselves, we will count down three, two,

one, and you will unpause your DVD, which has been queued up.

And hopefully the movie will follow along right with us.

So you'll see the scenes that we're talking about as we're talking about them and get

a really good sense of the story.

And get a really good sense of just, you know, the conversation we're having, the fun that

we had recording this and in making the movie.

And a lot of the scenes we kind of call out who animated what and talk about the difficulties

in that.

So like I said, you'll go grab your copy, your Blu-ray, your DVD, your Amazon, your

Netflix, your iTunes, whatever copy of Tangled that you have, queue it up to the very beginning,

right when the castle starts and you see those flags waving and the fireworks going off.

Pause it there.

And then wait for us to say,

three, two, one, and go.

And then you'll watch it along with us.

So without taking any more time, I'm just really happy to be back.

I'm happy to announce the animation podcast episode number 32, the unofficial Tangled

Animators audio commentary.

And one thing that I do want to mention before I get started is that all the opinions here

are those of the individuals involved and they do not represent the Walt Disney Company.

Just want to make that clear.

This is the unofficial commentary.

So with that said, please enjoy.

Why don't we start?

Just go around the room.

Say your name, how long you've worked in the studio, and if there's a character in the

film that you identify with, it's like, I worked the most on this, or my favorite one

to work on.

So we'll start over here.

I'm Amy Smeed.

I've been animating for about, or I've been at Disney for about 13 years, and I worked

mostly in the pencil.

I'm Adam Dykstra.

I've been at Disney for about 16 and a half years.

I've worked.

I've worked on Pascal, Rapunzel, and Flynn.

I'm Jennifer Hager.

I've been at Disney for about three years, and I mostly worked on Rapunzel and Flynn.

I'm Miyuki Kanawon.

I've been here for three years, and I mainly worked on Rapunzel and Flynn.

I'm Adam Green.

I've been at Disney on and off for about two and a half years, and I worked on Rapunzel,

Max, Flynn, and Koppel.

You guys all sound so sad.

I'm not.

I was gonna pull 재 ABC.

I'm Pfenn and Green, and I've been at Disney for like ten years.

Back to you!

Sorry and you?

Ah, you're talking.

Now to Daniel Buesche.

My name is Daniel Buesche.

I've been here a little over one year, and I worked on Tangled mostly on The Horse, on

Maximus.

On something?

I'm John Wong, been here about three and a half years, and work mostly with Rapunzel and Flynn.

I'm Zach Parrish, I've been here for a little over a year, and I mostly worked on Flynn.

I'm Marlon Noe, I've been here for about five years, and I mostly worked on Flynn and Rapunzel.

Wait, I finally know how to say your name.

I'm officially going with Noe.

Since when?

Since the two times we were like this.

I'm going more French this time.

I'm Doug Benete.

I'm Doug Benete, I've been here about 15 years, and I worked on some Flynn, some Rapunzel, and some Gotham.

Gothel.

I'm Joel Reed, and I've been here for just over a year, and I think I worked mostly on Flynn.

Rapunzel.

Very true.

I'm Mark Mitchell, I've been here 16 years, and I worked on the Gothel.

I'm Carolette Tamaki, I've been here for three and a half years, and mostly worked on Rapunzel.

I'm Patrick Osborne, I've been here for three years, and I worked on kind of a broad range of characters in Tangled.

Nice job, everyone.

My name is Darren Myers.

Of course.

My name is Darren Butters, and I've been here for 15 years, and I did a lot of Flynn stuff.

I'm Becky Brzee, I've been here for about 15 years, and I mainly worked on Rapunzel.

Chris Cordingly, I've been here for about seven years, and I worked mainly on Pascal.

I'm Chad Ferron, I've been here about 15 years, and I worked mostly on a horse and a chameleon.

I'm Clay Cadis, I've been here about 16 years, and I've mostly worked on a horse and a chameleon.

I've been here about 15 years, and I think I've mostly worked on Krauts.

A couple Flynn shots, but mostly Krauts.

Richard Town A.

Betty Tangi.

I'm John Kars, I've been here for three or so years, and I worked on...us.

Everybody.

The other two.

I'm Chad Sellers, I've been here about a year and a half, and I mostly worked on the hook hand thug.

I'm Jason Fugliozzi, I've been here about a year and a half as well, and mostly Max and Rapunzel.

I'm Malcolm Pierce, I've been here about a year and a half, and mainly worked on Rapunzel and Gollum.

Awesome.

Good night everybody.

That's it.

I may explain this now and leave it, or record it later and explain it and put it on the start

of this thing, but the idea is people will download this, we'll queue up the DVD, we're

already on the first frame, it's paused on frame one, and we'll kind of say, three, two,

one, play.

Hopefully the people at home will hit play, they'll play this at the same time, and it'll

all sync up.

So...

How much money will we make from this?

All of it.

I'm already 180 in the hole, so...

So I guess what, should we count down, like three, two, one, and then hopefully this will

hit play over there, and we'll go.

So all together?

Three, two, one, play.

Yay.

It's blue.

Designed by Mike Gabriel, right?

Yeah.

That's pretty awesome.

Wow.

And there's a bunch of Disney elements in here, there's the trains and all this other

stuff.

Yeah.

So, we're going to play this.

So, you show me more of your stuff, of the hidden stuff in there.

So, we're watching this with the sound off.

So, who knows what's happening.

You're going to go singing.

I've been practicing.

We'll check it out.

Yeah.

I almost cried the first time I saw this.

This little Mickey?

Yeah.

I was like, that's it.

How old were you?

Three and five.

So, what do we say about this movie?

I mean, but there's...

Yeah, what do we say about it?

Yeah, I mean...

How do we get into this?

Should we just talk about what we expected going forward?

Yeah.

Whatever we say about it, I guess, so we got into this.

Should we just talk about what we expected going in or do we talk about the shots?

Anything?

Anyone wanna work on the shot?

Oh first shot of the movie.

Zach Parrish, Zach Parrish.

Zach Parrish, one of his 746 shots.

This is actually Zach's demo reel.

Yeah.

This is a movie.

I think we should talk about that.

Yeah.

what what the standard of human animation was and what we tried to achieve okay i think that's a big

part of this whole movie yeah i mean there was a meeting early on i think john was on vacation but

we had a crew meeting in the theater and i was an idiot and i said this would be the best human

animation anyone's ever seen and i was like oh shoot

uh but i think in a lot of ways it is um i don't know if you guys agree but

definitely the best flower animation

i think it was weird coming off of bolt and working on this because if you if you have

a dog talking or hamster talking you kind of have to buy it you're like oh okay that's how

this hamster would talk

But an 18-year-old girl, you know, a human that you see every day has to have even more believability.

I don't know.

And not only that, it has to be stylized and appealing and all those things. Believable and beautiful, you know.

Without being too realistic.

Yeah. I wonder how many people thought we used motion capture for this.

At least one.

Is that you, Malkin?

We didn't, Malkin.

If someone had asked that on a tour, we'd film some motion capture.

Duggan was still Duggan.

Aw, baby Rapunzel.

I mean, a lot of the process was, you know, people filming themselves, Glinda doing drawings, a show of hands.

We'll just maybe say, who films themselves when they're doing their shots?

It's like the entire room.

There's a lot of hands.

Yeah.

Depending on the shot.

Yeah.

And we're filming each other.

Horrible.

Kira running upstairs.

I got a lot of exercise those.

Yeah, I think Kira did reference for half of us at least.

It's hard to watch the movie go by because there's so much that went into every shot.

Like this hair and the lighting and the texture and all the stuff that we're waiting to see happen.

A lot of work.

Was the hair what you expected as far as, like, when you start out and you know that there's so much hair in this

that it's going to have to be animated by hand, a lot of it.

Did you guys like it?

I remember not seeing hair renders for a long time and we were all like, what's it going to look like?

What's it going to look like?

And then when it started coming through, like, the cloth and the hair and everything just, like,

plussed your shot so much that it almost felt like you could have gotten away with a lot less.

But you did.

You did.

And halfway through, I did.

So I was trying to figure out how to work less.

Yeah, right?

Your stuff got a lot better.

Before the hair stuff came through, me and Henry, one of the animators that was here,

we went and checked out some of the hair work in progress stuff.

And we were, like, really excited.

We were like, this will get us motivated.

And then he just showed us what he was working on and it was terrifying.

We were so discouraged.

The bra hair?

Yeah.

Well, just like, this is where we're going with the simulation and it was just, like,

this crazy Barbie doll with all this hair randomly coming out of it and it was really

unappealing.

But they figured it out, like, I guess a month after that, it just started snowballing.

It became kind of a character of itself, which was really cool.

Yeah.

Yay!

Cheers!

Tony Smead.

Should we talk about how this was singing in the beginning?

Uh, yeah.

Go for it, Marlon.

I don't know what it used to be.

Like, was it 20 notes?

Yeah.

Just 20 notes.

Yeah, Tony had made, like, three or four shots of her singing here.

Yeah.

I believe it's on Blu-ray.

It's on the Switch.

No, it's not.

Oh.

Yeah, it is.

He left.

No.

Because it was, it went through lighting, everything.

No, it's fine.

You put it on.

He's gonna hear it.

Oh.

Yeah.

It's on the Blu-ray.

Yeah, it is.

It's on the Blu-ray.

The sequence is on the Blu-ray.

That's right.

I just edited that.

Wow.

Okay.

About two hours.

Yeah.

So, I don't know if anyone wants to jump in and talk about, like, making animation

better.

Like, how do you go from good to better.

And how do you approach...

Yeah.

You're blanking.

Yeah.

You're blanking?

Yeah.

So, I don't know.

If anyone wants to jump in and talk about like making the animation better.

Like, how do you go from good to better and how do you...

You're blanking.

Yeah.

I think that's a big part of it, right?

Do you want to talk about Glenn and how he maybe changed

one of your shots and pushed your shot?

The coolest thing was at the beginning of production

when we had like a two hour meeting with Glenn

where he just, he went through every shot

that had been approved so far with Rapunzel in it

and he drew over every single one of them.

And even if the shot was done and finished and great,

it still could be better by his standard

and his tiny changes really dramatically changed

a lot of the shots and it kind of set a standard

for the rest of the show,

which you see in a lot of the shots.

A lot of these shots weren't done

at the beginning of production,

they were done towards the end of production,

but you can tell that Glenn's influence is still there

if he didn't draw over these directly.

I think in the kind of moving holds, the facial,

you can see the subtleties that Glenn had in his draw overs

that just really sold the scene.

It's great stuff.

I think it was neat to see that

at the beginning of production,

there was so much draw over the work,

tons and tons and tons,

and then by the end, by the end of the production,

it was like less and less and people were getting it

and it was clicking and I don't know,

it was neat to see everybody grow,

like there were a bunch of mini Glenn Keens running around

because they kind of got his sensibilities towards the end,

but it did take a long time to like get it right.

Looking back on it,

Glenn was less concerned about the motion

and more concerned about

designing the appeal in all those golden poses

that you remember when you watch the shot.

Yeah, I was gonna say like,

Glenn animating, actually animating on a shot

was probably like maybe 5% of the time

and the rest of the time it was just making an idea clear,

pushing something and pushing a pose

and just like making a graphic.

Drawing the eyes a lot.

You always started with the eyes.

You pushed out a great deal.

Eyelashes were in the direction.

That was a big challenge too

where you would draw so specifically

and you'd see him really focusing over the draw overs

and you'd go back to your desk and go,

okay, I have to match this as perfectly as I can

and you push the 3D model as much as you can

and it just looks weird in 3D

because you get those automatic volumetric deformations

that happen around the shapes.

It was kind of frustrating,

but we had to find a balance between his drawings

and what we could do with 3D.

And that influenced the model changes too, didn't it?

And the rig.

Yeah.

To be able to achieve those shapes.

Yeah, I mean that first pass that Zach's talking about,

the drawing over every shot that was done,

that became the guide for how to fix the rig

because he kept drawing the same things over and over.

I have this sheet of paper

that basically has like nine things on it.

And we went back and did those nine things

and from then on it was just like,

it wasn't hard to make those shapes happen.

Wasn't the sequence put in really late

when it felt like they needed to introduce Flynn?

Yeah, definitely.

As a thief early on?

Yeah.

The original debut of him was at the Wanted poster.

Yeah.

Sorry, Darren.

I know.

It was great.

This great shot of him.

They needed to establish the crown

more obviously, I think.

And break up the songs as well

because there were two songs back to back originally.

Oh, right.

That's right.

Mm-hmm.

That's also part of the reason

why they took out that song

in the very beginning with her.

Just like three songs in a row.

Right.

What did everybody think

when they said it was going to be a musical?

Yay!

It's not a musical.

It's a movie.

It's a movie with music.

It's a watch-buckling adventure.

It's certainly not a fairytale.

It's about the movie.

I remember the conversation on like,

how would she pull up Gothel with her hair?

And like, where would she put her hair?

And how the mechanics would work?

And I think it looks pretty good the way we did it.

Wow.

Brent, how many?

Brent's not here.

We can talk about it.

So Mark, you tracked Gothel's age through all this?

Yes.

And then all of that was ignored.

And then we...

We went...

They went back and forth on like,

how old she was supposed to be.

So on a lot of these shots,

we animated her like at 40.

And then we would see the renders come back

and she'd be at 50 or something like that.

And her face changes quite a bit

as the age happens.

But I think each shop's kind of customized a little bit.

Nothing was just right out of the box.

I think a lot of ladies who are 40,

or are 50, say they're 40.

So our little slider was not really the truth.

It was what she...

What she...

Told.

Oh, told.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, the little age slider was a lot of fun.

You'd play with it and, you know, 40 was nice.

And then drag it over to 110, everything went south.

Everything.

Every single thing.

Could you imagine?

Yeah.

Oh, gravity.

It's always funny.

That shot of...

Patrick Osborne did this shot of...

That came on earlier where she's positioning the chair.

And I remember that was a big moment in the dailies

where Patrick had done a really nice blocking of it.

And then Nathan just was like,

I think she should just be...

And as she's putting the chair,

she's already running to the next spot.

And he started overlapping and layering the events

and her action and really driving it

with so much rushed intention.

And it was such a clear...

It was such a clear direction on what the shot should be

and could be.

I remember after that thinking,

hmm, this guy's a pretty good animation director.

And because...

It seemed like early, the first sequence,

he'd come in and be like,

I don't know, you guys say what you want, man.

I'm kind of new to this.

And he'd kind of take a back seat.

But after about six weeks, he was just like, boom.

Like moving into the front of the...

Definitely moving into a leadership role

in terms of what it could be

and always driving it from the intention

and the thought of the character.

And then Glenn, I think, just riffing on that,

watching those two guys act it out,

just with his stylus in his hand over the Cintiq,

would just be ready to draw that emotion of what he saw.

And he became like this kind of like magic illustrator tool.

The three of them together became like a really clear source

of what you needed,

what you were going to do with your shots.

And like those guys kind of always reaching back to the story.

And Glenn, being able to illustrate it in a way

that you could never...

Even the way you saw it in your head,

the way he was drawing it,

was better than you saw it in your head.

And time and time again, you'd hear Byron say,

yeah, it should be like this.

Oh, yeah, yeah, just like that, Glenn.

Just what you're drawing right there.

That's great, that's great, that's great.

Because he'd always kind of blow past your expectations

with his appeal and the feeling of the emotion

they were going for.

And then you'd take those back to your desk,

and that would be your kind of Rosetta Stone,

your guide of what you were going to use.

to get to your destination.

It's hard.

I want to start to talk about the talk that we give

when we talk about the film, but it's...

This sequence is really fun to see come together

because it's just characters.

It's all performance.

And it's kind of, yeah, it's a highlight.

And so much contact between the characters,

which I think...

Wasn't this one of the first sequences we did?

First song, yeah.

I was thinking, what's the first shot of Rapunzel?

Sequence six.

Oh, right?

In the chair.

Maybe Rapunzel.

Around the chair.

Yeah.

That was in production.

Yeah.

Well, the first one we got done...

To talk about the directors a little bit more,

I felt like they did really well.

I felt like they did a really good job

of giving us good notes on mainly performance

and the goal of the shot.

And kind of left it up to the supervisors

and the animators to make it look nice.

There wasn't so much notes on the arcs

as it was on what the character's thinking

and what the shot needs to portray.

Yeah, I think we like to have trust for the group

that they can figure out the physics

for the most part.

They can figure out how to get those pieces put together.

And when you have that,

you entrust them to do that part.

And what you're driving the animators from

is what is the character thinking?

What's in their heart?

And what is the character feeling?

And then let the animator more or less make their choices.

And it wouldn't happen all the time.

I think people...

Every one of us got kind of like a tongue lashing

or something about how it should be exactly this way

and no other way sometimes.

But then there are other times

when there would be a lot more freedom

in how you could interpret that.

But when the animator's left to reach those decisions

and those solutions on their own

from their own creativity,

I think you end up with a much stronger end result.

Do you guys feel like

you can kind of define the things

that you learned on this show,

the stuff you picked up

that you won't ever leave behind?

Like what?

I don't think I can define it.

I think a lot of what we learned

is just inherent now.

And if you try to just tell someone,

like, oh yeah, I learned how to pose,

how to do an eyelash,

it doesn't really mean anything.

But so much of what you got

out of watching Glenn

just put himself out there

and you guys

and then the directors and stuff.

Yeah, it's really indescribable.

Yeah.

I think for me, a lot of it,

especially with Glenn, was appeal.

And now when I'm working on shots,

I tend to look at the facial animation,

especially the eyes, completely different.

And I...

Me too.

That thing that Glenn was always talking about

with how the eyelashes affect an expression

so dramatically made a big difference on me.

And like Amy was saying,

just really paying attention

to the appeal of the face

and making sure that it works

with servicing the scene.

This is absolutely the wrong sequence

to talk about this.

I think that the style of animation

on this show was a lot more restrained.

A lot more restrained than what we normally do

and what we're kind of seeing out there

in the marketplace.

This is probably the broadest

these characters look at in the movie.

It's like a Glenn-influenced thing,

but I don't think that if Glenn

was working on the next movie

that he would be animating it in the same style.

But this was...

It was a really, really controlled,

you know, no kind of...

Here's your bag of tricks on how you do a take

or, you know, how you do a head turn.

It's like...

It's not based on sort of formula stuff.

It's based on kind of really

what is this person thinking?

What is this person feeling?

And animating that

rather than kind of the cartoon convention.

And another thing that the directors...

The directors labored over the storyboard so much

that by the time you got issued the shot,

everything had been thought about

and planned out

and simplified

to what that scene needed to be.

And it was...

We heard all the time,

just do it less.

He's just standing there in this one drawing

in the storyboard,

and that's what we want.

Don't make him move so...

It wasn't a gesture festival

like some other animated features you've seen.

Right.

We want to keep him alive

in that one strong pose.

Yeah.

We just want this idea.

Stop moving him around so much.

And I remember there being some talk about that too,

you know, outside.

We were like, man, really?

Wow, is that the right choice?

And then when you watch a sequence in its entirety,

you're blown away by how right, you know...

You're less distracted by all the animation.

The first shot I worked on here

was a shot with Flynn,

and he just raises one eyebrow.

It's after Rapunzel's telling him

that she never breaks a promise.

And I just came from Blue Sky,

and the animation style there

is much more broad and cartoony.

And so I start the shot,

and I'm like, all right,

I'll be done with this in a week.

This is easy.

So I show my blocking,

and they're like, yeah, just, you know, pull it back.

Maybe half of that.

And so I think I do that,

and then when I show again,

they're like, no, no, keep pulling it back.

And I probably spent two weeks

on this, like, 28-frame shot

until I can get to my desk

the next morning.

And Nathan had drawn these two drawings

of Flynn's face.

And the only difference in the second drawing

was that one eyebrow was lifted higher.

And he said, do this at the bottom.

That's what I do.

I don't change it.

There's that one static in the shot

in Sequence 18 when it's just like,

when Flynn bumps into him,

he looks up.

And who did that shot?

Was it Joe?

I think it was Bowers.

Bowers, yeah.

And it was like,

he had some eye animation right,

and he said, take that out.

And then there was,

they're breathing,

and they're like, take out the breathing.

And I think they realized it in Sweatbox

when they saw it again all cut together.

Like, there was no animation in that scene.

They were like, well,

maybe put back some of the breathing.

So we went back and added the breath.

But, like, that's how much

they were pulling back on the shots.

Want to talk about the breathing?

No.

I always felt like you,

you know, you would put it in,

you'd think it would be too much,

and then they would want more.

Yeah.

I remember us talking.

I remember a bunch of shots.

Kind of got,

it was like a job master note

where we had to go back into a bunch of shots

and just add more breathing.

Yeah, especially the singing,

all the singing.

Yeah.

Was this the first musical for everyone?

Yeah.

We didn't realize.

First of many.

We didn't realize how much

the inhale kind of

lent itself to the song.

Yeah.

And we didn't have the best

playback room either,

so we would, you know.

You wouldn't hear the breath all the time.

Watch it.

You wouldn't hear the breath.

You can go down to editorial

and it's like .

It's not animated, so.

And you look at Donna Murphy's performance

and her inhales were huge.

She has huge inhales.

Yeah.

Nice lungs.

Yeah.

She was a great reference, though.

Watching her, even, you know, shots like this,

it was great, great to watch her.

I did some of the stuff

where she's yelling up to the tower

and I got a lot of my hand motion

and she did weird shaky stuff with her hands

that I directly stole from the recording.

Going back to like,

kind of what we call the leg,

kind of what we,

things we learned

and kind of carry over now.

Just hearing Glenn talk recently

at the,

at Inspire Days,

he kind of brought up how

towards the end,

the animators were like thinking,

it was like this saying,

like WWGKD.

What would Glenn Keane do?

And then,

like the animator would go back to their desk

and like,

while working on their shot,

they would,

instead of like settling,

they would kind of come back and say,

okay,

start imagining what Glenn might draw

on top of the shot

and kind of trying to get that in there.

Yeah.

It became like a game.

Like,

can I get Glenn to not draw on my shot?

And we all failed.

I think it's a good thing to take.

Like,

I was looking at a 2D test today

and I,

I said the thing of like,

if Glenn was looking at this,

he would say this.

It's like,

I think after a while,

it's not just what would Glenn say,

but it's like we're,

something we're taking with ourselves

and it's part of our arsenal now.

You start to anticipate.

Forget him.

This is what I would say.

You can't dismiss those shots.

Yeah.

I mean,

it's like,

you can't dismiss those shoulders.

Yeah.

I mean,

it's not just like,

oh,

I don't know how to put this.

It's just like,

what is it,

what is actually the thing

that he's doing

when he draws?

And that's something

that I feel like

I personally took away

from this film

that I used to think

that it was enough

to move the body

as a whole,

believably.

But what he really showed

is that the body,

the body,

the torso,

and the hips,

and the shoulders,

and the relationship

of all those pieces

can work together

to express emotion

and they can have harmony

to them.

And each character

can kind of be

like a very well assembled,

like harmonious collection

of their parts

so that it all kind of

flows together

and hangs together.

And he would always say,

tilt,

rhythm,

and twist.

Twist.

Right?

Tilt,

rhythm,

and twist.

Tilt,

rhythm,

and twist.

And those were,

you could apply

to the face,

you could apply

to almost

just any component

of any character

or the whole character

all at once.

Like how,

if you just move

the shoulders,

cant them one way

and you move

the hips

the opposite way

and then,

so there's a little bit

of an S curve

from the head

down to the hips.

And those are the kinds

of things like

when you talk about

what would go into,

those are actually

the things that he kept

drilling into us

and that we would end up doing

when we go back

to the general asymmetry,

looking for an appeal

and a focus

in the eyes

and the asymmetry

in the mouth.

Like there is kind of

like a playlist of things

he would come back to

time and time again.

But ultimately,

like that's,

that's one thing

that I think really is

in kind of Disney's DNA

is they,

they've always found

a way for their characters

to really hang together.

Not just that the characters

are well designed

but the characters

are posed within

their own design

in a way that really

makes sense

specifically for each design.

And I think Rapunzel,

he just had a really great handle

of this young teenage girl

that was kind of,

grew up barefoot

and the way she occupied

her own body

and moved around the room

was very,

he did this pencil test

that really felt great,

very natural.

And the way he would

talk about her

and the way he would

talk about her

was really,

it was really,

he would talk about her

and it really came through

in the way he drew her

and that kind of infected

the whole way

that we thought about her

and the way we would

move her and pose her.

But in terms of

the minimalism,

it feels like,

to me,

if he,

he would show you

just one pose

that works so well

or so,

so it looks so good

and was,

it just felt

nice enough

that it didn't need animation

because it could just sit there

and be pleasing enough

as it's own,

on it's own

as a drawing

as a visual of the character just sitting there.

So it didn't need to actually move that much.

And that supported that kind of minimalist ideas

that the directors were bringing to the sequences.

So this awesome shot by Tony,

this whole sequence is some of the first animation

that got done on the movie.

Although it didn't really get done.

It was, since it was the first stuff,

we ended up going back and revisiting this stuff a lot.

And we didn't have hair for a long time.

So obviously shots like this got worked over a lot.

But this was kind of us kind of figuring out

who these characters are and how we're supposed to move them

and what looks good and what we should never do again.

How many head injuries does he injure?

It's like six.

I love how he's like, he's like hitting the head

and like slammed into a log and like all these things

and he survives.

Yet he gets stabbed by a tiny little knife and dies.

What?

That was totally ending.

Oh.

Come on.

It was my one shot.

Woo.

What is he doing?

And then you see it all come together

and you're just like, holy crap, that's like, that's Ariel.

That's like all the stuff that he does.

Twisting and pushing and like,

wringing everything out of the characters.

It was like shocking at first.

He's like pushing us way too far and after a while

it looks like it just became so natural

and so just, you have to why to,

you have to like, like Eza just try

to predict what Glenn will ask for.

I think it's just so good at zeroing in

on the storytelling pose, you know?

that's really the essence of the scene, so.

This was the first sequence we did, right?

Yeah, this is an example of,

this sequence went into production

with an earlier version of Rapunzel

that didn't really work as well as we hoped.

And we actually went back and took the upgraded Rapunzel

and put her all the way through the sequence again.

We did all the shots within an upgraded room.

The animation didn't change a lot,

it was just the shape of her brows

and her neck and her shoulders.

Wasn't her arms, too?

Oh, there's the eyebrow shot.

Two weeks, baby.

Two weeks.

So we were worried about this new guy, Malcolm.

Flynn's kind of different in this sequence, though,

because we had done a teaser with him in it

that he was playing a character

that was pretty much worked out

by the time this started, right?

So you'd have a lot of these shots

that were completely polished and ready to go on Flynn's side

and Rapunzel still wasn't there and bald.

That teaser was the teaser in Japan, right?

Did they use a lot of those shots in the trailer?

Yeah. Parts of it they did, yeah.

I guess the idea behind that was to

kind of get the pipeline going

and figure out how we're actually gonna make the movie,

as it's short.

Any one of those teaser shots

where Flynn is stashing the stuff?

Share it with all of us, Darren.

Yes, Darren?

In the teaser shot, Flynn breaks into the tower

and he starts stealing stuff, because he's a thief.

And I had my shot pretty well blocked out

and was starting to...

break it down, and Glenn stops me in the hall and goes,

I've been thinking about your shot.

And that's never a good thing.

That's never like, I've been thinking about your shot

and it's awesome and keep going.

It's always, I really think we ought to do this.

And he totally flipped the intention

and Flynn's thought process and it turned out so much better

and that's what happens when you're constantly

thinking about how to improve everything.

It's another sequence of shots

by the amazing Tony Smead.

I love just the run, so much character in it.

Makes me wanna roll in grass.

Yes.

It's like an allergy commercial.

I'm sorry for you.

It's okay.

Can you tell she likes musicals?

Patrick!

More packing.

Don't tell anyone.

These are some more shots that are direct lifts from the storyboards.

I mean, most of them are just one or two poses, and this is where I think, this is where the

movie really kicks into gear and starts to pick up and be really fun, and you saw that

from the boards right away, so as you start to animate these shots, you're just like,

I don't want to screw this up.

This is where it's really working, so you do exactly what's in the boards, and it works

well.

This is by far the most common comment in daily sessions.

One of the questions was, can we bring up the storyboards?

It was just, it was so well-defined.

You knew exactly what you had to do.

So yay story team.

Yay, yeah.

You feel like you need it, too.

The boards, and it's like, it's shot.

Oh, here.

You ever done that?

No.

Changed your mind on that one?

No.

Those little cutaways of Rapunzel wiping her nose and sniffling, and that's when I was

like, oh, Joel, you're sick.

That's how I was feeling at the time.

That's pretty good.

I mean, they just play really fresh to me, really simple and really appealing.

Good.

Should we talk about Pascal a little?

This looks just like Aaron Butters.

Hey.

Hi.

Yeah, I shot some reference for this.

I got to shove you on that.

Yeah, yeah.

Kira pushed me across the reference room.

Yeah, Pascal was a chameleon.

Yeah, it was a chameleon that was always on her shoulder.

But not on her shoulder, on the clothes, the puffy clothes on her shoulder.

Like when you think you're done with your job.

It's like, oh, I forgot Pascal.

That's what it is.

Goodbye.

You're done.

What did he just say?

He was basically reflecting what Rapunzel was doing, right?

Yeah.

That was the note normally.

Yeah.

Just to, he does what Rapunzel is doing.

He looks at what Rapunzel looks like.

He's just like his quad.

It's all about Maximus.

For Rapunzel, he's not subtle, right?

And then the chameleon was like this.

It's a slightly more cartoony, exaggerated version of her emotion.

Exactly, yeah.

More subtle animation.

Jason Bigelow.

In an IMDb, they call out every time that we, as a goof, every time that we hid Pascal behind her shoulder and her hair.

Oh, really?

Because we're messes?

Yeah.

Did we mess up?

No.

We don't.

We chose every time.

There is a lot of times we had to cheat where the hair was.

It's in the next shot.

Yeah.

If you had 70 feet of hair and were dragging it along, it would be tangled.

Is that what we call it?

Get out.

Yeah, let's talk about Maximus.

I think it's interesting.

Like, Danny, you did that test.

Like, how many weeks were you here?

Like, three weeks.

One day?

Yeah, so the first day you were here.

It was my first assignment, I think.

Yeah, you grabbed the rig.

You animated it.

I think Lino told me, you know, we need some tests with this cartoon, you know, and some

action and acting.

And I did the sniffing and sort of realizing something with the fling was here.

And, I don't know, I was really scared that maybe the director won't like it or, I don't

know, it's my first animation that I show in the dailies.

It was a super exciting moment and I was glad that it got a good response.

I just remember Glenn saying, that's our horse.

Yeah.

It was just kind of a watershed moment for the horse.

Just to have one test that everyone was like, yes, that's the character.

Yeah.

It started Maximus in a lot of ways.

Felt really good, yeah.

And that kind of fits the idea of not having character soups is, we always sell, that's

always a selling point of like, well, if we don't have soups, then it's kind of an open

field for anybody to...

Contribute so that somewhere in that group, someone's going to stumble across a character

defining moment that's going to launch it to another level.

And that's a good example of something like that happening.

Yeah.

I was really nervous early on because I've worked here forever and it's all about the

characters and the leads and they own that thing.

And I was like, I'd love that idea.

And I went through that and I did that.

And then on this movie, I was like, all right, now that I'm not going to be doing one of

those, no one will.

And it was really nervous for me to make that choice of like, the characters will find

themselves out of the crew.

And I don't see, I think it's actually better this way for me just to see the crew do it

and everyone agrees on this character and we're like finding all the facets of these

characters all together.

It's just, and then everyone's got an opportunity to expand the universe of this character and

say, well, they would do this in this situation.

Everyone kind of like, I never thought of that.

And it just becomes another part of the character.

And versus someone saying to you, like, oh, no, they don't do that.

And, oh, he wouldn't raise his eyebrow like that.

And that's really, to me, kind of stifling.

And it worked out.

So the pub.

Chad Sellers.

That was supposed to be Nathan.

That one plug in the back.

Yeah, I heard him.

I heard him.

Call the guards.

Yeah, we had 21 thugs plus three extra guys in the balcony with hats on.

It's just not the amount of characters, the interaction with them.

It's so hard to get.

I didn't do the show, but I can imagine how difficult it is.

This is Joel's awesome shot.

It became an internet meme.

Yeah.

Hipster.

Yeah, hipster.

Hipster Rapunzel.

What happened with him?

They put the glasses on.

They put glasses on and turned it into a hipster.

Oh.

Cool.

We're going to sit a little on this.

That's a mall.

There we go.

Long lost Jamal.

What is Jamal?

I haven't seen him for a while.

He is missing all the fun.

So not having animated songs, did you guys animate differently?

I mean, I don't think you do. It's still a performance. You just open the mouth longer, right?

Yup.

I feel like the rhythm of the shot is a little more...

It's a little easier because it's predefined.

You don't have to figure that out as much.

That's kind of the difference between doing a pantomime test and a dialogue test.

You've got benchmarks, and with music it's just that much more,

because the rhythm of the music and along with the dialogue makes it nice.

One funny thing about Hook Hand is that, I forget what happened one day,

but for some reason someone had to hide, I think it was Patrick, did you have to hide the hook?

Yes.

For some efficiency sake, I have to go to a place,

and it turns out that Hook Hand has a teeny tiny little baby hand

scaled down under the hook.

I think it was easier for the modelers to keep them symmetrical or whatever,

for whatever reason.

Oh, for ringing or something?

All the characters have the same geometric topology, it turns out,

so they had to leave the hand.

We laughed for hours.

I could not stop laughing at his stupid-looking little hand.

It was like the size of a thimble.

It's just this tiny little A or 12 scale.

You're so embarrassed by it.

Yeah.

Zachary Parrish out.

Suck.

This show, this whole sequence is also a little bit loose

as far as the realism and a lot more cartoon-y than the other shots in the movie.

Yeah, it was fun.

You could have shots where they were super restrained and super realistic,

super realistic, and then you could do a shot where you had some crazy smear frames and stuff like that

that just had to be appropriated to the shot.

Something like that, you know, where there's some smear in there, which is really nice.

It's fun to have the whole variety in one show.

Did we make and rig that goat character for that one shot?

Yeah, pretty much.

He's in the background.

Did we miss the Pinocchio thing?

Oh yeah, Pinocchio was in the big shot.

We missed it. Oh, it's coming up now.

Oh, no, we missed him.

It's Boomba.

Hey, Steve, there's Grinnell.

With his tattoo.

He has the stars on his arms.

He's got the same.

He's standing there.

I didn't even know it was there until I watched it.

No, that's Danny.

That's me, yeah.

Oh, the warthog?

Yeah, he did that.

Oh, really?

The hog.

That's the most complicated shot.

I think one of the interesting things, there aren't any shots that aren't well done.

Even out of that whole sequence, all those quick little pieces, we went over those things like crazy

just to make sure that the weight was right, the contact was right.

Every shot got the same amount of detail, which is kind of crazy and maybe not very efficient.

It's good in the end.

Everyone's favorite thug.

What's he called?

He's not drunk.

He's not drunk, though.

He's short.

Paul at Tompkins.

Shut.

Shut, did you?

I had no idea how that was going to work in storyboards.

He just kind of made it work.

So, wait, he has arms now?

I want the duck beard.

This was really painful in Daly's shot of the guy getting his head smashed.

Marlon Nolan.

We were like, wow, is that going to be...

No we?

What's his last name?

No we.

I remember Glenn drew a big R-rated on top of it because he thought it was too violent

to have to keep dialing it back.

That's awesome.

I mean, he took that idea.

He just, like, he went way further than anyone expected.

When I saw that shot for the first time, I was like, oh!

Well, I added, we always get the sound that we put under a shot, and I added, like, a

skull crushing.

So it played the first time, it went like, and then it was like, ah!

And the thing was, Byron said, let's turn off the sound.

And then it played less violent.

I have another shot later in the movie where...

Where Glenn gets smacked against the bars in the jail, and I had a couple of frames

of, like, his nose completely breaking and, you know, pushing it, and it was the same

note, like, ah, no, no, no, too much.

I'm quite violent.

Because everybody likes that.

Everyone likes funny last name.

The first last name shot, right?

Yeah.

This was some cool stuff to see come out of lighting.

It was always cool to see something out of lighting, because it was always completely

different from what you were picturing in your head.

And it was lit?

Yeah.

I'm going to stop talking.

I didn't realize until this was in lighting that this was outside.

Yeah.

I had no idea.

I thought they were in a cave.

This, to me, always felt a little bit like Indiana Jones.

Like, I remember watching when it came out of lighting.

I used to...

I remember thinking, like, oh, man, people are going to love this, because it just felt...

It had that...

It's Thunder Mountain Railroad.

Yeah.

That's what it looks like.

And who doesn't love Disney?

Yes.

Awesome class.

Here it is.

Ninja Rapunzel.

The Zack Hour.

Yeah.

Zack.

This was a fun section to do, because there were...

The storyboards weren't very defined for this stuff, so I got to actually play with it a

little bit, choreography-wise.

And then I went back to layout, and they redid the cameras, and then I got to redo the animation

to the new cameras.

What do you mean?

Two times the clock.

It was awkward.

No, it was...

That was a really fun sequence to work on.

Didn't this almost take you a day to do?

This is the one.

Did you shoot video reference in fighting?

No video reference.

Why?

I don't know.

The game.

Damn.

That's a change.

I don't know what you mean.

That was pretty long.

Yeah, that was pretty long.

Let me demonstrate, of course.

Okay, we're going back to the levels.

The levels, the

levels are up in here.

Go away.

Let me rub off.

It's like, if this puddle was here, otherwise that would hurt your feet.

She has calluses.

And Zach and the crashing wood.

Did you shoot video reference for it?

He built a giant system out of it.

This is a lot of water.

I remember watching this in theaters

the first time and just being completely blown away by this.

Remember that shot where they're running towards the camera and Daley's glendrew a giant T-Rex

chasing them?

When he puts the shot like that, he does every frame.

He does it while the directors

are talking over the shot, and then he'll just push play it.

Chris, you should talk about your little joke you did

with Pascal floating to the top.

You get kind of depressed working on shots where the characters

are dying. You're talking about how they're going to die.

So I just kind of killed Pascal in one of those shots.

The shot Kira and I worked on. Yeah, it was right at the moment where Rapunzel says

this is all my fault, I never should have done this. This is the one.

Rapunzel jumps, floats up.

And he stays there.

Nobody even pays attention to him.

The shot was like 50 feet, so it was a good way to get extra animation

out of there.

The lighting in this sequence is awesome. It just makes you feel claustrophobic.

And the stereo

is really good in theaters. When I first saw this in storyboards, I thought they were dead.

I don't know how to get out of this.

I guess we're ending this movie really depressing.

Our heroes drown in a cave. I also love that in this sequence

this is one of the first times, I think it's the first time Rapunzel cries in the movie, right?

And I remember Glenn, I think it was you and John, talking about

how the ugly face is really important when someone cries.

It's true, the ugly face, I totally buy it. Every time I watch

the sequence, I really feel like she's really crying.

Maybe it's just a bias, but I feel like a lot of studios wouldn't do that.

They wouldn't go for the... Some actresses don't do it.

It's kind of a category of actress that will let themselves just be overcome

with emotional, like a Meryl Streep type person

will let themselves do the ugly face.

I thought it would be a lot more powerful if she went there too.

Big shout out to the hair crew. Amazing stuff.

Underwater hair. The effects too, they did all this underwater stuff.

Hair and cloth.

That's going to be a new ride.

They're going to sell tangled ponchos for that.

This was one of the shots that were done very late. Remember Joe Bowers doing Rapunzel?

You did Flynn, right? Yeah, I did Flynn.

It was very under production, it kind of slipped by, so we had pretty limited time

to not film that. Was that your last shot?

One of them.

No, I just like to keyframe

eight frames before the end of my shot.

We saw this and we were like, man, that cape is cool looking.

It was one of the earlier cape sims on the console.

Mark, you really enjoyed that cape.

She had this stupid looking bathrobe

thing before, so if I take credit for anything on this movie, it will be convincing

Nathan that she had to have this cape.

No sleeves. No sleeves.

That was worth it. That was totally worth it.

Mark walked around with a drawing of a cape for two weeks.

And then I walked around with an actual cape for two months.

We were walking by the animation pit, and Mark's just standing there going,

In terms of beer, I just kind of stopped and went,

Alright.

Because that was before we knew the cape was even going to be on her.

Did you make that cape?

No, Ted made that cape.

Oh, did she?

Yeah.

Oh, that's cool.

We never named the Staffington brothers, did we?

Patchy?

Patchy.

Patchy and Chops.

They don't even say their name.

Horizontal Scar, Vertical Scar.

This is a nice sequence.

Yes, it's my favorite sequence.

Because it's just two people talking, and I feel like real people.

And it came at a nice kind of sweet spot in production, where we really started hitting our stride, I think.

When you watch it with kids, though,

they added, these Pascal shots were in there,

and it would always kind of keep the kids going,

my kids in particular,

when you're sitting in the theater,

they get really bored with adult conversation,

and they would see the Pascal shot,

and kind of keep them going a little.

And then later in the sequence,

they have a little insert shot of her,

of Pascal kind of sympathetically leaning his head on her foot,

and they added that in,

and when you watch it with kids,

it's like, amazing,

because they're just about to lose it.

They just can't take it anymore,

all this grown-up talk.

And then they see that one little shot of Pascal,

it's like a shot of heroin.

They're like,

ah, thank god.

I remember when the sequence didn't have all the shots,

and John Lasseter,

this is one of those moments where we're like,

this guy's crazy!

That's for Pascal shots.

We're like, this is going to ruin the sequence, right?

It actually does make it better.

This is a shot where she touches her hair a lot.

Like all the other shots,

where she touches her hair a lot.

Didn't they have a freak out

whenever you'd hand them a shot,

and they'd be like, oh god.

This is you, Becky?

Yeah, this stuff is really great,

because she's like,

letting it out for the first time,

and she's looking at him like,

do you think I'm a freak?

Kind of thing,

and it really plays clearly.

In that pose.

Yeah.

That's one of my favorite poses in the movie.

Nathan always would get very

particular with his shots,

about how

these people were.

Whenever there's a first date

kind of thing,

especially in the lantern sequence,

and also when they're walking in the cave,

and there's this kind of flirting going on,

he would be very, very particular

about how

these microbeats of

how they're playing off each other,

and

it made for a lot of really rich detail,

I think,

in the way he thought about it,

you kind of absorbed that,

and it would kind of fill the sequence with

a lot of richness in their personality

that I don't know if I would have had

otherwise, and then

that, again, like, coupling that,

all that subtle ideas

mixed with

glad I'm kind of illustrating it for you

as you're going through it,

really made for really appealing

performances.

Awesome couple shots by Jen Hager

and Lena DeSalvo there,

of Flynn.

It's funny when you're

careful what you wish for,

it's like,

oh, I want this long monologue

where he just,

it's all,

and then they give it to you,

and you're like,

oh, God.

The directors didn't,

I don't think they wanted

the hand to come up,

so I took it out,

and then Glenn came by my desk,

and he's like, I saw your shot,

I really like what you're doing with the hand,

I want to talk to them.

And then he came back and he's like,

it's still in, you're good to go.

They didn't want it to seem like

Flynn likes her because she's got

this magic power.

But he used to rub his hand

more, like, overtly.

He brought it up higher, I think,

and then he just kind of minimized it,

almost like an afterthought,

I think, in the end.

This is where animating the villain

really gets fun.

This is all leading up to a

electrifying

Mark Mitchell extravaganza.

That's the name of his first album.

It's either that or Gesture Parade.

It's your first album.

It's the diva,

it's the cape, all coming to this...

It's the fog.

You have a YouTube channel, right,

where you save all this stuff?

If not, just scroll down on

Clay's podcast and he's going to upload it.

Your reference will be

online, right? Nice.

I always wanted Flynn to come back and go,

what was all that singing?

Did you hear that?

Because it was loud!

I could strike here.

Love these shots.

Wasn't there something about

the strap in that shot that you

couldn't do it that way

and you were just bound to determine

that you were going to make sure that the strap

went around her body like that? Someone said you can't do it that way, but we just did it.

That was kind of the name of the movie

sometimes.

We're just going to do it.

It's Mark Mitchell.

And the fog's gone.

My nephew, when he watched this in the theater,

when she did that, he goes,

that is one crazy old lady.

Amy was showing me some video of,

I think she's like a three year old girl or something,

acting that entire sequence out.

That's the most hilarious thing I've ever seen.

That's awesome.

Your girls are relating to the villain?

What have we done?

Daryl.

That's Joe.

This is Joe.

What about the butterfly?

Remember? They love the butterfly animation?

They just like showed up.

We're like, who did the butterfly?

We're in a chat room.

Shout out to Eric Daniels, too.

He did draw overs,

planning where the hair should go,

and how the simulation should run.

And he was keeping it consistent,

making sure that

the hair you see,

which is pretty much environment,

and each shot has a reason to be where it is.

Awesome.

Shout out to Danny.

How did you say your last name, Danny?

Patient.

Pixie.

Tony LaVanderous.

Pixels.

Dangerous.

Jason Pigliosi,

cutesy, Rapunzel shot,

Yeah!

Yay!

It's a lie every time.

This is probably my favorite shot.

I love the little pouty face.

Thanks, man.

You're welcome.

Because the boot came off there,

always sticking through the boot in every shot he did. I guess he didn't have a

foot on the left.

It was a really tiny foot.

Yeah, it was a tiny foot.

That's an awesome Hiram shot.

Where is Hiram?

He does such a good job of focusing.

This is the shot that we show when we do the talking.

Clay and I are talking about the movie.

Everything is firing.

The rigs are working beautifully.

It's so clear.

There's hardly any...

Well, there's no words coming out of

Maximus, but it's very clear what he's

thinking. The hair sim is

just seamless.

The lighting is all rich.

It comes together in that shot.

It comes together all

the time. It feels like that's a really good

example of it in that shot.

I agree.

Here comes the town

folk.

I love

handmade crafts.

You actually did animate

these shots where there's...

I love it.

I hate those movies where you

see these cycles of people

sprayed across the countryside.

We really wanted people actually

doing real things.

John, he made these little vignettes on paper

of these three people are doing this.

We handed each of those out to everyone

on the crew. You guys all know this. I'm talking to the microphones

right now.

Every animator took a little piece,

animated a character doing something, and then I took

all those for these big shots and just

used those and put them...

This shot is probably 40 people's

work, and then I just figured out how to coordinate

it all and smash it all together.

I think it ends up being this thing where

there isn't a robot in the background

looking at an empty window.

One of the things we

kind of figured out

when you have a...

People just don't usually walk alone

in an environment

like a marketplace or something.

They're actually there as a couple or a

small family or as a group of guys

talking together. These kind of small

groupings of people that are interacting,

they make a lot more sense

than just these kind of lone

figures kind of

playing mindlessly across the landscape.

I think we passed them.

Oh, we passed them.

Passed what?

Yeah.

No cursing in commentary.

I remember in dailies when...

I think it was Glamdror, that little boy.

Put him in gold tooth and changed.

Wasn't that Ron? It was Ron Smith.

Oh, yeah.

One of the cool things about the town

that Clay was doing also was making a little story

for each group. Like this guy went and bought

potatoes and then he's going to get

he's going to get the

parsnips or whatever, the ingredients

for this and then he needs the bread

now and now they're ready for dinner.

I don't think it made a difference.

But it was fun.

It was kind of like this added work on top of our

day job so we'd be here till 2 in the morning

for weeks and weeks and weeks

and then we would go to the theater

and we'd sit down at the premiere and it was like

wham, the whole sequence just came

and went in five minutes.

I was sweating.

That was it?

I have to mention this

shot where he throws the bag. Miyuki did that

shot right. She was so accurate

the sim almost landed on the dock.

It was a simulation where

let's go and it almost made it.

Dude, it was so good.

I didn't expect it to just fly off into the distance

or land in the water but it was so close.

This sequence

when they first boarded it

and it

still plays out that way for the first part of the song

but when the singing

begins it's in, it's kind of imagined

that it's in her head, what she's thinking

and wishing for

and

when that went to

that was up for a screening

and I think John

I think we were already kind of saying like

I kind of just wish they had just burst into song

because at one point Flynn

starts singing to it. It's kind of this

duet of them looking at the lanterns

and looking at each other

and getting closer and closer but

they're not singing, you just hear their voices singing

and there was a big

John Lasseter review and he's like

I'm kind of thinking they should just burst

into song here and we're like, yes!

Because it felt like

this, it was such a seamless

entry into

these characters

singing in a very classic Disney musical

kind of way but it felt like a very

natural pathway into it.

I've got to stop here, this is Wayne's

show so I'm going to cry right now.

Okay, but the best part is

right here, his

goop shot was

he had hands keep coming up

I think it's just like

he just found the perfect expression, the perfect

pose and didn't have to move at all but

man, people see this shot, that's like

the first cry in the movie or anything for a lot of people.

Yours was

the telephone.

I love how this

really feels like a

community thing here. It feels

like 4th of July

on the river watching fireworks

or something.

How many lanterns were in this?

17.

It was more than 15.

I think it was more than

2,000 people in that courtyard I think.

Those are actually people in there.

I love it.

And in the boats. There's people on the boats doing stuff.

Those were like the

lowest rooms we had. The blobs?

Yeah, we had the blobs.

But they all have stories, right?

Their eyes looked like they were

sawing a shuttle.

And now, ladies and gentlemen,

Kira will sing to us.

Come on.

Seriously.

But what if it's not everything?

You get to sing another song.

Find a new singer.

This was that moment

where they kept saying

this is what this whole movie's

been leading up to.

This is her big

This is what she's wanted all of her life.

And you really felt

the work that had

gone into this.

The choreography of this entire sequence.

This was definitely a 3D

moment too, I felt like,

of the movie that worked best.

When you saw this in 3D in the theater,

it was just like amazing.

I like how

you can't tell where the water is

because

the reflection is so clear.

It looks like they're floating in space.

Every one of those lanterns has a fire inside.

Wait, so they're not

actually in space?

Where did he get those lanterns?

I do think

all the departments on this show really

gave it their all.

We were doing these scenes knowing that they're important.

These characters have to go through these motions

and emotions and hoping that it'll

look good.

I think we saw the stuff and it just made it

even better and better. I think every department took what we did

in effects and lighting here

and even the sim team.

Totally brought it to this place that we never thought it would be

or hoped it would be.

I remember sitting in the theater with my son

and he was trying to grab the lanterns

because it's 3D. And this came so

close to it, it was crazy how

pushed it was.

And then everything caught fire.

Yeah.

It's also my son's fault.

Can we cut that?

John Wong moment there.

Woo!

Here we go.

Sing, Kira.

This was

like a, like a, I don't know.

This was my, my life is complete

this moment that I got to do it.

Breaking out into song, Disney.

Musical.

It looks amazing.

I think that was another good example

of breathing, too, during that shot.

I feel that when we kept

going back and forth on how much to breathe

and how much not to breathe.

Did we redo that shot like three times just for breathing?

Yeah, it kept, John Lasseter kept saying

more and more and more. And every time

those breaths weren't super simple, you had to like

build it into the spine and everything.

Really amazing.

You can't just scale the chest? No.

Breathe slider.

Sorry, Darren, your shots are done.

Shoot.

Becky.

Remember I was like, what did she say, what did she say?

Scouring the internet.

So if you also scrolled down an animation podcast

or something.

This is one

of my favorite shots in the movie.

Right here.

This one.

It's just so simple and.

Yeah.

But there's so much thought going on,

you know.

that and all that tells me

like you were saying about

each department given they're all

a lot of

I think anybody who's worked on a movie

has seen some part of the

process where it looks

great in storyboard and then when you

animate it it gets too complicated

and then when they put the texture on it

you're like oh really and then they

light it and you're like what

and you get to see it

in the theater and you're like wow that

really wasn't what

I thought it was going to be but with this

movie every

part of the process every step that

you saw it got better

and better and more exciting and

yeah you couldn't wait to see your scene

yeah

it was funny

the energy in the studio everyone was

like on a tent just

like knowing that this like I think there

was a point I don't know at some point

through it where everyone knew this was

going to be awesome you know and

everyone just poured themselves into it

and like people were dragging and their

eyes were saggy and every time you'd see

people over time dinner you know it was

like it was hard work and not just our

department every department but then

people just sacrificed

yeah it was a definitely a

managerial choice from Ed to not move

the release date when we had to kind of

reboot the story and everyone thought it

was crazy in the ways it was but it

also forced us into this mode of

working where there were no second

chances to make this as good as possible

I think for some reason it switched us

over to this mode of just like being as

good as we could all the time and you

know we ended up animating the movie in about

eight months right it was a record for as

far as I know any place with the amount

of people we had to yeah yeah it's

really amazing was it 50 animators yeah

about 48 plus three

I think it's because of the project

though too I mean I don't know if I

could have done as much over time and as

much work and put as much of myself

into it weren't something as fantastic

as this movie either because you knew

that every every ounce of energy you put

into it it was you were gonna get back

you know in the theaters and stuff big

fat paycheck

or not these shots crushed me too I

don't know who did this way thanks for

making me cry Wayne he did that in bolt

to bolt he had that shot to get everybody

cry were the carrot bolts looking at

penny yeah he realizes that he can do

bars better places we've cried a lot of

those moments where an animator to find

something like Henry did that shot where

Gothel opens her arms up and we that

happens three times in the movies this

became this motif with Gothel and

Rapunzel this callback and like once

Henry did that we kind of went back to

the others and said make it feel like

that because that is exactly the moment

or the motion we want why doesn't he

the course I don't understand

Steve

see now the horse goes and tells the

thugs you guys it was under what you know

Jimmy's trapped in a well this is cool

too we're like playing grabs his neck

this is a lot of your engineering in the

game yeah like others there's so easy

instances in this film that they didn't

put dialogue in or they actually removed

dialogue where it was necessarily it's

just so much stronger for that yeah

remember it sequence for when the guards

are chasing Flynn the captain was like

saying all this crap he's like there he

goes

we got about that's all you have to

trip out like half of that so much

better oh yes I'm going to give you a

and this used to be all one sequence right and then they decided to cut between the two

yeah yeah it was all Flynn in jail and all Rapunzel and Gotham and in editorial there's

Tim Merton started mashing it all together and cutting back and forth

the content didn't change but just the order showing it and it really jumped the movie up

yeah I remember they had a lot of spend a lot of time on how Rapunzel was going to realize she was

a princess and they had other versions and they streamed them and everybody was like that that's

not believable she would not figure it out that way and then they came up with this where she

figures out through the flower that's pretty cool and what version that was actually written written

on that thing wasn't there a version where

uh Pascal is he has the sun pattern on his side and he crawls up the wall and then she realizes

that it's all yeah that's strange beautiful bite ow man no inside the head you're blurry

have people listening have it synced up right otherwise

Flynn's already dying and they're like what are they saying

I'm sorry spoiler these were some shots that I saw on storyboards way back when and I was

so pumped for whoever got to animate them and then I found out that I got to do these shots

of him knocking out the guards I was so excited did you shoot reference for that one too no no

it hurt in the theater for that shot Marlon there was a kid sitting next to me here

when his face got slammed against the bars daddy I'm just scared

Marlon does scare people why it makes me cry

John long and nothing that was fun too because John did Rapunzel and I didn't

doppel so you got your kind of change your own character didn't have to worry about switching up

Adam Green yeah yeah nice I still remember the footage just shot yes you being Rapunzel yeah

didn't we I remember seeing reference with you um and you and Zach at one point for the for the

shoving shot and we I remember like we were really shoving each other for those the horse stuff yeah

but we took my stuffed animal of Bolt and like pretended it was the horse's face or something and

kept shoving him

my favorite reference I think is uh the four guys grabbing Flynn in jail and dragging him on screen

from John and uh a couple other guys yeah I'll meet up with Tony yeah oh that was fun yeah

on the left

remember when Hiram hurt his knee or whatever

that was so cool

awesome

I call my angry shot so I'm not an angry person

Mark Mark

um

,

we've never seen this movie

it's been who did uh drunk Mike Mike

I'm close

MJ

I don't leave

um

I would help dig about an element that frying pan became

yeah

do they sell it is that a toy

and we kept joking that the mime was modeled after sandstrom

i shaved his head after he came to try to look like joe bowers

there's uh three pigeons from bolt right there

you know that yeah

this

reaction shot of maximus i just did an eye dart there

those guys are so bad yeah they're terrible

i think at the beginning of production alex cooper schmidt said i want the most craziest

action-packed complicated shots in the movie and he got him

a sucker

this is one of those majestic disney moments right there and

the music builds and all the other higher helicopters

that are where they got the helicopter

yeah when we saw the lighting in the sequence we're like oh cool the weather changed

our

weaisley

was a lot harder than a slide

do you want this here i did it once and i think it was so yeah we just kept reusing it was reused like eight times

There's no blood on the knife.

The goose would have been PG-13.

You think it's because it's CG and not hand animated?

Because I remember in Beauty and the Beast there's blood on the knife.

So it's like, I remember being disappointed.

There's some blood in CG movies too.

It's Kira.

It was super fun.

It was very cathartic.

I could get all my aggression out.

I guess if I'm doing these kinds of shots you have a headache for the rest of the week.

You're like frowning in the mirror all the time.

It's hard to do. It's hard work.

This is Joel Reed again.

Really nice little stuff.

These were my last shots in the movie.

It was kind of sad.

That carpet looks great there.

Zach and I were talking about the fact how we miss animating Flynn sometimes.

Because we have these trainees now animating shots.

And we wish we could animate it too.

I'm jealous. They have great dialogue clips with Zach Levi.

He was such an amazing voice and such a great rig and character.

It's sad that I don't get to animate him talking anymore.

I thought Zach and Mandy really did such a great job of giving us so much to work with.

Usually there's a celebrity and they're just like whatever.

But they were actually the best choices.

And they could sing.

And it was funny because when Zach started doing some of the voice and then we started doing some of the animation.

And then he saw some of the animation.

And got more into character.

By seeing what we did.

And then giving us even more to work with.

It was really cool.

Uh oh.

I remember a bunch of us got to go to the scoring session during this.

Oh yeah.

I remember hearing it.

Oh my gosh.

They were recording the choir at one point.

When we were there.

That was awesome.

Some amazing animation of Gothel by Jamal Bradley there.

Great stuff.

Yeah.

I remember asking him about that.

How did you get inside the character's head?

Well you know.

She's got to think of a bad moment.

He's a method actor.

Yeah.

You're right.

Didn't Gothel have at one point in the story.

She had like all these crows around her.

All the time.

Yeah.

And then where she went all these crows would go with her.

I guess in the office.

Beautiful expressions.

It's the ugly face coming back.

Yup.

Uh huh.

Yes.

Glenn said I did a good ugly face though.

That's a good point.

This scene's good too.

This podcast has everything.

Lino's death scene.

Very nice.

This casting was okay Zach can do the action.

Zach can do this and the flame and the guy.

Can he do the crying?

I guess so.

Yeah.

I felt this so, so much in the theater.

Kudos.

Yeah.

Blow out.

That was a shot that Glenn was like it's just not something we can do in 2D to get

all those shapes moving around.

We have to add so many lines and it would look wrinkly and that was the defining moment

for me was when Glenn said that I did something that he couldn't.

Because that'll never happen again.

Awesome animation video.

I tried animating on the computer and now I know how hard it is for you guys to get

something that just looks bad just looks bad cool job one of the things that i love about

these shots that amy did is she added like the little gulp swallowing on rapunzel and she just

did that with deformers you really feel her welling up and crying i swear i've seen this before

this big water worm comes out

i love also how the the lighting changes the color changes like it when he dies it's very

subdued and then when he comes back to life they bring the color back up

yeah i was on vacation for a week

you

came back and all these scenes were like black and white and i was like what happened to the

color it's like oh it is in color

is there a little

a little bit of becky and kira did that kissing scene

and scroll down

these scenes are really because even from the boards there

was no dialogue in it and they never put any in and i'm glad that they trusted us with the

to get it across in the acting yeah i think the king says more than a lot of the characters in

the movie he never actually says anything it's very deep

you let the gong after you talk wow wow did you write that before you came here

this is my moment because

There's Malkin channeling his inner mother.

I've never had a goatee.

Is that your shot, Adam?

Yeah.

You look at that note, make them hug more.

Yeah.

That was just a lot of contact in that shot, for sure.

Mm-hmm.

Two more.

Can you try the dancing?

Why?

It's your shot.

Some of his last shots were like all hands on deck.

He was not doing anything.

Yeah.

Um, you animated that guy.

Knuckle crack.

Mark Mitchell print?

Yeah.

Chats.

Danny.

Yeah.

It's funny how you see the animator's hand in every shot.

I see the animator at some point in the shot.

Sort of.

And he spits out the core.

Chats on the core.

Yeah.

The other out.

The happy ending.

Malcolm.

I think this was the last shot.

How many people worked this thing.

We kept handing it off, right?

We started with Jessica and Rob at the beginning.

And then I believe Becky finished that up a little bit.

And Tony did the mother, baby, little girl.

We did Rapunzel, Queen, McKean.

Patrick helps him.

Jamal helped him, Pascal.

Jen, was that your guess?

Yeah, I animated all the characters in the last scene.

The most disturbing ending to any animator.

Amanda.

Oh, Amanda.

Carrie.

And then Xiyun did all these incredible drawings.

Awesome.

I love the card for Clay, you, and John, and Glenn, because Xiyun drew you guys in there.

Yeah, awesome.

And this was like a big secret.

I don't know if you guys saw this before in the movie, but I never saw it either.

We did our best to hide it from everyone.

And there's one card where there's that fortune-telling monkey that was in the original

DVD of the scenes.

I just remember coming back on Monday after the movie came out, and I did so well.

Amazing, it felt like, to come back to the studio.

We knew we had a great film, but knowing that so many people actually couldn't see it, it

was an amazing feeling.

Yeah.

That kind of validated all of that hard work.

And, even if you do a good movie and the marketing is terrible and nobody sees it, you're still

like, oh man.

Uh, but this, everything fell into place and everybody got to see it.

I went to, I read stories to some 4th grade kids at some school and I said, I worked on

this movie and this movie.

Oh, they're there.

I worked on this movie and this movie

and I said, and who saw Tangled?

And they were all like,

it was so great.

The drum?

It was a great bunch of asthmatic.

It was a great bunch of sea lions.

That's the last time

they were in a record kit.

So how do we wrap this up?

While the credits are playing, anything you guys want to add

or something you thought of that didn't really fit

into the movie but you want to talk about?

I don't know. I remember reading a lot

of stuff online before

coming and working on this movie and

there were so many, I don't want to say

there's just a lot of discussion about

all this movie and it's just

doomed to failure and it's been

in production for so long and

first it's Rapunzel, then it's Rapunzel Unbraided

then it's Rapunzel again and all this stuff.

To me it just felt so good that when this movie came

out and people responded so well to it

it just felt so

you felt indicated and you just feel proud

of it to know that

yeah

it worked out

because so many people were like

no, it's not going to fail, we're not going to let it fail

and it just came together.

There's so much stuff on the blogs

just Disney haters

about it should be in 2D

and

just all this stuff

and then when it comes out

all that stuff goes away

for a couple of years.

Until we have a new movie.

I think

Nathan has said this a couple of times

but I've been here for 15 years

and I

signed up to do movies

like this and it's taken

15 years for the studio to

actually get

everything in line and turn

everything around to be able

to do it

that now I can leave.

laughter

applause

laughter

Thank God.

laughter

And everyone starts applying.

That's actually why we made the movie.

laughter

Yes Jon?

Did that not wrap it up?

laughter

Thank you very much.

I don't know, anything else?

I don't really have any questions.

I didn't really plan on doing this.

Any questions from the audience?

laughter

Go to caller.

Is there an awesome animator at Fly Disney?

Or is there a new animator?

Fly Disney?

We're looking for people.

Yeah.

Do you want to join this room of people

who laughs and has fun?

laughter

And have your name written on it.

Yay!

applause

Yay Ricky!

laughter

This movie would not have gotten made without him.

Not at all.

Ricky Rickenberg.

What a name.

laughter

this is what you get

sorry

cut

well there you have it

that is the great audio commentary experiment

and hopefully you guys like it

I'd love to hear what you think about it

if you would just go to animationpodcast.com

and leave a comment on this post

you can also send me an email but comments are

preferred and

just let me know how it worked for you

did it sync up, was it entertaining

was it worthwhile, would you like to hear one of these again

maybe on the next film

whatever you think, just let me know, I'm really curious about this

so again, thanks everyone

for always hooraying me in public

about the next podcast

like I said, if it weren't for you this wouldn't exist

and again, thanks to all the people that helped me

create this podcast

all 22 of you

you know who you are, I'll see you at work

and to all my listeners

thanks for tuning in

and I'll see you next time